Friday, November 22, 2013

How many times in our lives have we spent an extra buck on
something? Perhaps it was a convenience item we forgot at the supermarket or that we made a choice to buy one brand over another. Perhaps we needed an extra coffee or decided this
was our week to win the lottery. Sure, we could have not spent the extra dollar,
but we did.

Why did we do it? Because in our minds, the item was worth
it at that particular moment. We almost don’t think twice when we buy a bottled
soft drink for $1.59 when we could buy a can for 59 cents.

Why, then, do we skip one fueling station and head down the
road to another because the posted fuel price is 1 cent cheaper? For a car with
a 14-gallon tank, that’s 14 cents if you were running on fumes. Even for a
commercial truck needing 150 gallons, 1 cent difference means $1.50 savings.
Two cents cheaper would be $3, and so on.

The comparison, and our mindset, demonstrates the difficulty
that we, as a nation, face when it comes to paying a little more for the very
roads and bridges we drive on every day.

Perhaps we all take for granted that the infrastructure was
designed and built decades ago for generations that couldn’t possibly have
imagined the technology, the traffic, or the size and weight of today’s trucks
that we have now. Obsolete bridges that were designed to carry 5,000 vehicles a
day are carrying 20,000. Urban sprawl and commuting have almost gotten out of
control.

The point being made here is that eventually we’re all going
to be asked to pay more to travel.

Rep. Bill Shuster
chairman of T&I Committee

This week, I was in Washington, D.C. on assignment, covering
a summit on infrastructure hosted by the American Highway Users Alliance and
Volvo.

Many of transportation’s big players were present as guest
speakers or panelists, including Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari, U.S.
Sen. Barbara Boxer and U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster. The latter two chair the
committees that are largely responsible for writing surface transportation bills.

In fact, it was Boxer who coined the term “MAP-21” for the
current two-year bill that passed in 2012, fully titled Moving Ahead for
Progress in the 21st Century.

While many people outside the transportation realm may view
MAP-21 as a glorified extension of the last bill (SAFETEA-LU) because it did
not drum up any new funding or grow the federal transportation program, that’s
not entirely accurate.

As Boxer put it during the summit, MAP-21 reformed the
federal program, overhauled it and cut a great deal of red tape.

Sen. Barbara Boxer
chair of the EPW Committee

“We did so many of these reforms that now we can just
concentrate on the funding for the next bill,” she told the 160 attendees.
Boxer is chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Shuster, who chairs the House Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee, says he expects the next highway bill to be drafted
in the spring of 2014, building in some time to work out any differences
between House and Senate versions by MAP-21’s expiration date on Sept. 30.

While lawmakers go to work debating the funding mechanisms
for the next bill – fuel taxes, tolls, etc. – the public is going to need some
convincing.

Shuster says the big challenge is convincing the public that
there’s a problem.

“We’re not going to ignore the funding issue. But I think
it’s important that we build the case. We need to make sure the American people
know there’s a problem,” Shuster told the summit group. “If we lead talking
about funding, I think that diminishes what we have. We’ve got to build the
case to the American people that there is a problem, and make sure they
understand it.”

If they understand it, then asking the public to pay a
little more would be an easier sell.

Another of the summit participants, Bud Wright with the
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials – easier to
say as AASHTO – says the fix may not be as shocking to the American people as
they might otherwise brace themselves for.

“It would take an additional $1 per week per person to grow
the program at the federal level,” Wright said.

Greg Cohen, American Highway
Users Alliance

Wait a minute. Weren’t we just talking about spending an
extra dollar on soft drinks?

Are we being told that we can once again regain a globally
competitive and state-of-the-art system of highways and bridges for a buck a
week? Not flying cars and smart grids, but we could certainly add capacity and
make roads safer and less congested.

The debate will come from the various ways people will have
for sweet-talking – or prying – that dollar out of people’s hands.

The trucking industry’s small businesses, owner-operators
and large carrier fleets have all made their positions known, and it is
surprisingly unified: increase the federal fuel tax rather than resort to
overuse of tolling or other methods. This is an area in which OOIDA and the ATA
fall on the same side.

The longer we wait, the deeper the hole gets. AASHTO says
the Highway Trust Fund will have lost $57 billion because of alternative fuels
and hybrid vehicles because fuel taxes are not collected on those vehicles. So
something needs to be done to get those vehicles paying their fair share to use
the system.

Sen. Boxer likes to talk about her hybrid vehicle and the
fact that she has only filled the gas tank three times in the last 3,000 or so
miles. She says she’s willing to pay her fair share but does not support a
system that would have satellites and computers tracking every mile to apply a
tax.

She was serious when she told the summit group she supports
an honor system in which vehicle owners report their miles traveled when they
renew their licenses, and pay their taxes based on their odometer readings.

But there’s not much bureaucracy in honor systems, and Washington
loves a bureaucracy. Government loves to talk about creating jobs, and except
for a few exceptions the government hardly ever shrinks.

Some, like U.S. Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, believe the
transportation funding can come from a national infrastructure bank. He has a
bill in Congress right now, HR2084, that would jumpstart the infrastructure
bank plan without using any money from the Highway Trust Fund or U.S. Treasury
funds. His seed-money idea is a bit complicated, but is something about
bringing back money to America that has been invested offshore.

Rep. John Delaney of Maryland

And with any form of funding, the “who pays” will always be
the highway user, in the form of any tax, toll or fee. So it’s back to
convincing people they need to give up one soft drink per week to keep bridges
from falling down.

We’ve heard the administration say for years that the president
will not sign off on a fuel-tax increase while the economy is in recovery.

But, as many people said during the infrastructure summit,
it’s time to have that discussion. It’s time to forge ahead. As the ATA’s Bill
Graves said during the summit, we’ve got to convince the policymakers to forego
their “intellectual amnesia” and take a stand.

The summit seemed to put everyone in the starting blocks for
the long run ahead to the next highway bill. It was also a place for new ideas,
concepts and opinions to be shared.

I couldn’t possibly walk away without sharing a video
presented during the summit by Volvo Group President and CEO Olof Persson. He
was part of a panel discussion titled Sustainable Pathways Forward.

Olof Persson, CEO of Volvo Group

The video shows how existing technology could lead to a form
of “driverless” vehicle. Obviously, the drivers are still behind the wheel, but
the technology would allow a string of vehicles – a platoon – to follow a lead
vehicle without the need for hands-on control. It would work by relying on an
experienced truck driver in the lead vehicle providing the cruise control for
the pack. Check this
out and try not to wince when you see the drivers reading the paper, surfing
the Web on their tablets, or turning to talk to the camera.

The summit provided some opportunity to discuss other issues
important to trucking and transportation. Rep. Shuster has spoken in his
remarks about continuing to reduce the regulatory burden on transportation
projects, carrying on from where MAP-21 leaves off.

During a Q&A, I asked if reducing the regulatory burden would
apply to other areas as well, such as the trucking industry.

“We’ve got to be smart about this. We just can’t keep piling
on regulations,” he responded.

I’m pleased with my first trip to Washington, D.C., to get a
taste for how things work and hear directly from people who have key roles in
transportation.

Freight movement, fuel efficiency, cost? They’ll all play
into the equation for the next multiyear highway bill. We may even hear some of
the same speeches when that time rolls around.

I could use some caffeine from the vending machine right now,
but I think I’ll save my dollar and hit the water fountain instead.

Nov. 22 is a day that Americans remember as one of our nation’s darkest
days. We read about it, talk about it, and hear TV specials and radio shows
about the life, career and still-questioned assassination of President John F.
Kennedy. Many of us remember that day – where we were and precisely what we
were doing.

I was in my high school gym class, in the locker room, and Coach Russell
was in her office with her hands over her face. But that’s not what I am going
to share with readers today. I want to let you read a “here’s where I was”
account from OOIDA Life Member Ralph Fries of Escondido, Calif. Ralph was a
trucker and longtime OOIDA Board member. But he also had an impressive career
in the U.S. Navy, retiring from active duty in June 1977.

Maybe because I can see this young sailor, far from home, hearing his
commander-in-chief was dead. Maybe it’s because JFK served in the Navy, too.
But I found this account worth sharing. Here it is, in Ralph’s words.

When I received word the
president had been shot, I was serving onboard the USS Epping Forest MCS-7,
homeported at Sasebo, Japan, as an MR1, A-Division and Machine Shop Leading
Petty Officer. The ship had arrived in Hong Kong Harbor on Nov. 22, 1963 (Asian
Time).

USS Epping Forest

During the mid-watch
(00:00-04:00), Nov. 23, 1963, RM1 John Pace was the senior radioman on watch in
the ship’s radio shack when the ship received an urgent message notifying the commanding
officer that the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, had been
assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22.

RM1 Pace stated later
on that he had first viewed the message and put the message in the captain’s
message box. He removed the message from the captain’s message box several
times to reread the message as he couldn’t believe in what he was reading, as
he had never read any message before during his career with that kind of
devastating information.

At or about 07:00, GMG3
Depperschmidt, petty officer of the watch on the quarterdeck, passed the
word over the ship’s 1MC from the quarterdeck, stating that President Kennedy
had been assassinated and the ship would be getting underway at 08:00 for
sea.

Upon departing Hong
Kong Harbor, the ship set “Condition Three” battle readiness condition. While off
the coast of Taiwan in the South China Sea, with the MSC’s mine sweep ships that
came alongside, we held a memorial service onboard on the flight deck for the
death of President Kennedy.

A day or so later, we
learned that Oswald had been the shooter in killing the president and that Jack
Ruby shot and killed Oswald.

Just a note, I was in
the 1st Class Mess (about 05:30), having a cup of coffee. The ship’s liberty
boat had just returned to the ship before reveille was sounded. The returning sailors
were saying that the Chinese people on the beach were telling them that
the president of the United States had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

During this same time
frame, my wife was residing in Sasebo. Our Japanese
friends and neighbors came to our home and presented Harlean with many bouquets
of condolence flowers to her in respect for the death of our president.

That’s where Ralph Fries was 50 years ago. Thanks,
Ralph, for sharing that.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Now I’m not saying I agree with it, but I think we can all
acknowledge that outside the industry, truckers generally aren’t stereotyped as
soft-touches. Far from it, in fact. But those of us who’ve spent any length of
time around the trucking community know that when it comes to lending a helping
hand for a worthy cause, truckers are usually among the first to roll out.

Case in point: A group of logging truckers turned a
15-year-old girl’s tragic death into a celebration of her love of life with a convoy
that brought truckers from all over the Pacific Northwest together.

Hannah Williams, of Vancouver, Wash., was diagnosed with
pineoblastoma in 2010, a rare and malignant form of brain cancer. She passed
away on Oct. 23. A celebration of her life was staged at the Clark County
Fairgrounds in southern Washington on Saturday, Nov. 16. The event was
highlighted by two separate convoys – one from the south in Eugene, Ore., the
other from Tacoma, Wash., converging on the fairgrounds.

Her stepfather Jeff Roberts, a longtime logger, spread
Hannah’s story throughout the West Coast logging community. Since her diagnosis,
Hannah had undergone radiation therapy, brain surgery, and a host of other
treatments to combat the disease.

Local news reports estimate as many as 150 truckers
participated in the convoy, which concluded with a barbecue at the fairgrounds.
Many of the trucks were reportedly sporting purple ribbons or other purple
mementos in tribute to Hannah. Purple was her favorite color. One area trucker
even dedicated his purple truck to her, renaming it “Hannah” before she passed.

Proceeds from the convoy and from the sale of shirts, hats
and purple ribbons are going to help Hannah’s family in their time of need.

A Facebook
page “Hauling for Hannah AKA Hannah’s Heroes” has posted pictures and other
updates about the girl’s courageous struggle. A story in the local paper
mentions a Make-A-Wish trip to Hawaii the girl and her mother got to take
shortly before her passing.

In a newscast on KPTV-12
in Oregon, one of the convoy organizers, log trucker Ryan Tatham summed it up
best.

“Everybody thinks we’re rough, tough, gruff loggers, but
it’s brought a lot of guys to tears,” he said. “I’ve had to hold back tears.”

In the same report, the girl’s mother, Tyana Williams,
talked about how the log trucking community identified with the toughness of
her daughter’s spirit in the face of a terminal disease.

“The trucking and logging community is a tough community,
and I think they appreciated how tough that girl was and how much she gave,”
she said.

Sure, truckers are tough. But they can also be amazingly
tender-hearted, and the outpouring of support for this
young girl and her family is just another in a long string of examples. Truckers
convoy to raise money for Special Olympics, donate to our troops through
campaigns like Truckers For Troops, help out our pets through organizations
like Operation Roger, and look out for their own through charities like The St.
Christopher Fund.

Saturday’s convoy and celebration of life for Hannah
Williams made news in papers and TV stations in both Oregon and Washington, and
it’s certainly a story worth telling. But it shouldn’t come as any surprise to
those who know about the spirit of generosity in the trucking community to see
them be captivated by this story.

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